Yeah, it was really a challenge to do that at first but when everyone agreed that our planning took too long and we decided to do this, it has become quite routine for us to notice when planning triggers the information gathering phase.

And as players are getting more familiar with this, their planning has changed as well. The focus of planning is now more about coming up with relevant sources of information than trying to anticipate the future.

Use every opportunity to turn planning into information gathering.

I try to use every opportunity to stop the planning “phase” of the game and go to the information gathering before continuing the planning. This can be pretty much any unknown that the characters bring up, like some if -statement in their plan, some fact they are unsure about etc.

The information gathering might be anything from a simple skill check to a full adventure and after that we go right back to the planning.

This has removed a lot of planning hours that wouldn’t have had anything to do with the situation they are going into.

This is hard one because most of the one shots are just awful as they rarely include any guidance to how to run them in short of time. At least every one shot should include a guidance of how and which parts to leave out when time is running out.

So the best ones are usually systems designed for one shots without separate scenarios but assuming you are asking about those the most palatable one has been DnD 5e adventure Sarah of the Yellowcrest Manor from Candlekeep mysteries. The middle part can be pretty much skipped if the time is limited, there is at least some guidance on how to run it and the end dungeon is short and sweet.

I moved to using DeepSeek which should have a much better energy efficiency compared to ChatGPT with same maybe even better results.

Pretty much the only things I use LLMs with ttrpgs is when I want to customize something I have an example of.

For example when I find a some kind of random table that has great format or style I like but doesn’t fit the area I would yo use it on I give it to LLM to produce similar but something that is more fitted to my need.

Edit: the other way I use LLMs is to translate texts as we don’t play in English.

I think the main way I acquire new ttrpg reading at the moment might just be Goodreads’ suggestions.

Secondary sources for me are things like different ttrpg communities in lemmy and mastodon.

Trajectory of Fear is a must read: https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Trajectory-of-Fear.pdf

And it’s really important that the table has at least somewhat common understandin of what kind of narrative they are trying to achieve.

I only things I have used multiple years are mainly for DnD 5e 2014:

• Monstrous Races - a supplement that turns everything from official Monster Manuals into playable races with a lovely commentary about how these were balanced.
• Conflux Creatures - just better creatures, this is the first thing I do is to replace monsters of premade adventures with the Conflux ones. They are just much better experience compared to sacks of HP that most 5e monsters are. There is no need to read “Monsters know what they are doing” when the stat block pretty much does it for you.
• Creature Loot by Medieval Melodies: https://medievalmelodies.blogspot.com/2017/06/creature-loot-intro.html - lootsies + crafting for all of the creatures.
• The Alexandrian: thealexandrian.net for reviews, advice and remixes of official campaigns
• Official WotC products besides the campaigns: Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons for all of the Dragon Lore

Had a wine & lore dump session with a partial group in our DnD 5e game. All of the speculation of my players lead me to realize how well historical events I have come up with fit to the official lore from Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons. I got also to introduce a NPC who will come relevant in three levels when they can tackle one of the better adventures from Candlekeep Mysteries.

We also played Alice is Missing for the first time and while it didn’t meet all of the hype, we had fun evening and I must play it again to get some more familiarity with the storytelling it assumes from the players.

I would say that most of the wisdom in Trajectory of Fear (https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Trajectory-of-Fear.pdf) would work here as well even though it’s about Horror.

If you think about the steps presented there as of Unease, Suspicion, Anticipation and Revelation then the advice should work really well.

“I can’t really do the same with my homebrew world which has very little in common with the real world.” I don’t think that is necessarily true but it requires the players to have a proper understanding of what is normal and expected.

I would say that many Mind Flayer villains are quite interesting because they are Mind Flayers.

Alexandrian had some interesting thoughts about what to avoid when running rival party in his Call of the Netherdeep -review (includes spoilers about the adventure): https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/48216/roleplaying-games/review-call-of-the-netherdeep